Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 203 posts

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#91

Post by TechBro8615 »

akkartik wrote: post #29

I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I r…

It's worse with Google, because they add the friction but then hide it in their own browser. There's no issue copy/pasting links from Chrome.

This is a pattern of behavior. For example, when reading an AMP article hosted by google.com, an iPhone will correctly show `google.com` in its URL bar. Whereas an Android will conveniently rewrite `google.com` to show the URL of the article source, falsely implying the browser connected to a hostname that it did not.

In any other context, it would be called phishing.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#92

Post by pritambaral »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #90
dimitrios1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTPS encrypts the host? Thought you had to know where to go to open that secure transmission. It's enough for your ISP to know you went to "pornhub.com" for example.

They won't know when you use an alt DNS or DoH.

You'll also need ECH, to avoid leaking your TLS handshake's SNI.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#93

Post by sk5t »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #71
vikingerik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even through HTTPS? They'll have the domain and IP address and transfer size, but not the URL or contents of the traffic. (Unless they managed to MITM a trusted certificate somehow.)

HTTPS encrypts the host? Thought you had to know where to go to open that secure transmission. It's enough for your ISP to know you went to "pornhub.com" for example.

Yeah, despite ESNI and DNS-over-HTTPS it's likely an ISP could still effectively track usage of certain large-ish sites by IP address alone. Compare against the anonymity inherent in accessing s3.amazonaws.com/some-bucket/some-path.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#94

Post by seanw444 »

carom wrote: post #23

It is really worth it to switch to DuckDuckGo. You can throw a g! at the end of your search if you don't like the results DDG gave and it will redirect you to Google. That was the feature that gave me the confidence to switch over, it's painless to get different results, even on a mobile keyboard.

As well as other bangs too. I frequently use !gh to search for software repos on GitHub, and !a to search for a product on Amazon.

Also, DuckDuckGo has taken keyboard-centric users into account, whereas Google has not. I rarely have to touch my mouse when searching on DDG. Up and down arrows to select the results, enter to go, / to return to the search bar, left and right arrows to go between images and maps and whatnot.

I almost use DDG solely for the UX. The added privacy is just a very nice bonus.

(Tip: you can also type "figlet ______" and it will give you ASCII art for the text you typed. That's neat.)

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#95

Post by rasz »

a-dub wrote: post #50

they've been doing this for a very long time. didn't know about this ping attribute for anchors though. i always just assumed it was for improving the index. the more a result gets clicked, the more relevant it must be. it's kind of a zero'th order optimization.

>the more a result gets clicked, the more relevant it must be

how? the more clickbaity Yes, but how do you judge quality by action of the uninformed (clicking before viewing content)?

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#96

Post by dandanua »

I wrote a simple addon that avoids just that https://github.com/dandanua/copy-true-link

The code doesn't prevent event propagation, instead it copies the link before propagation happens. I guess this way is more reliable. It works on other sites too, like FB.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#97

Post by rodgerd »

zo1 wrote: post #22
varenc wrote: post #11

Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…

Not to be facetious but Wow - I'm not sure how we let that "feature" slide past the "privacy" folk.

The Google monopoly doesn't give a fuck.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#98

Post by avnigo »

soraminazuki wrote: post #45
carom wrote: post #23

It is really worth it to switch to DuckDuckGo. You can throw a g! at the end of your search if you don't like the results DDG gave and it will redirect you to Google. That was the feature that gave me the confidence to switch over, it's painless to get different results, even on a mobile keyboard.

DDG user here, I’m not even sure most people would need g! anymore. I recently came across a Google search results page, and was surprised how unrecognizable it has become. Instead of giving me a page full of search results, it was presenting me with a page full of Google-curated content. At this point, Google is basically unusable for me as a search engine.

I’m a full time DDG user, but I still use !g sometimes. For some reason DDG is not great with discussion boards like any forum, stackoverflow, reddit etc., especially if the posts are too recent.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#99

Post by munchler »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66
akkartik wrote: post #29

I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I r…

> able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users A good moment to remind everyone: the goal of the attention economy is to make things as inefficient as possible, because money is made on the friction.

How’s that? Reducing friction for many sites means that users will spend more time browsing on the site. E.g. video auto-play on YouTube.

In this case, though, Google doesn’t mind frustrating users because there is no competitive alternative search engine.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#100

Post by yosamino »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #5

There's already an add-on which does this, and more. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/clearurls/

I recently noticed addons.mozilla.org also tracks links using this method. If you scroll down to "Add-on Links" the links to "Homepage" and "Support site" go to

  https://outgoing.prod.mozaws.net/v1/8a4c4de845953bc85d10c6465c5c0f11210b5ca1c195b70d7ddfcf8b74592477/https%3A//clearurls.xyz/
and

  https://outgoing.prod.mozaws.net/v1/8a4c4de845953bc85d10c6465c5c0f11210b5ca1c195b70d7ddfcf8b74592477/https%3A//wiki.clearurls.xyz/
respectively, instead of going to the page directly.

Why Mozilla? Why are you tracking us ? Of all the pages...

Post reply on HN